Trainer Aashay Doctor and his trusted knight Trevor combined fruitfully at RCTC on Saturday to bring home the bacon with a well-backed treble comprising Exceed, Morano and Live It Love It. However, several favourites fell by the wayside – most notably the Deepesh Narredu pair of Divine Run and Princess S. What is incredibly engrossingly poised is the trainers’ championship with BR Reddy on top by virtue of more number of ‘fifth’ placed horses than Deepesh Narredu! Three trainers are tied with nine wins apiece – Arti Doctor, BR Reddy and Deepesh Narredu while Aashay (who was suspended for a month) is fourth with seven wins. Thus, the final afternoon on Saturday is likely to be a humdinger of a quadrangular contest for the trainers’ sash. Being forever an underdog supporter, I will stick my neck out and say I am rooting for Reddy!

Back to the day’s events – Aashay Doctor=trained Morano (Dali-Harmonica) was kept handy second behind front-running Sky Force and took over the running without any difficulty whatsoever at the top of the straight to win the 1100meteres race for The My Opinion Cup as she liked. Aashay opened his account with Exceed (Western Aristocrat-Expect) in the seven furlong race for the Shivalik Showers Handicap. The top-weight was given a regulation ride by Trevor to win from second favourite Renaissance. The Trevor -Aashay duo closed their account for the day by bringing the curtain down with a facile start-to-finish victory astride on-money public choice Live It Love It (Dreamfield-One Life To Love).

The afternoon commenced with Vikash Jaiswal-trained Cascade coming good at last in the 2000 metres race for The Accuser Handicap. It was a weak field barring top-weight ante-post favourite Goodwill who may have found the 11kg of dead-weight rather uncomfortable. Despite being slow into stride, six-year-old mare Cascade (Quasar-Penny Lane) won by six long lengths in the hands of Varun.

The two favourites in the No Whips race for the two divisions of the Cadman Cup both succumbed to runners with long odds. Divine Run tried to make ends meet in the upper division of the six-furlong race but not had nothing left in the tank when challenged by Divine Gift and ultimate winner  Dr Doom (Perfect Stride-Top Romance)from the Javed Khan yard with Vishal Bunde astride.

In the lower division BR Reddy’s Trillionaire notched up his third win by putting paid to the pretensions of public choice Fast Approach. With this triumph, Trillionaire (Dali-Lost In Thought) is in line to bag the horse of the season title. It was an amazing top-weight performance considering the dark bay is a small framed fellow. Kudos to the horse and his mentor!

The upper division of the Alamito Handicap saw on-money public choice Princess S bite the dust as unfancied Cashaban (Surfrider-Silken Eyes) with Azharuddin astride put in a spirited run in the final furlong to fetch home the honours for trainer Sabeel Shariff.